How Many Failures Before You Give Up?

How many times do you fail at something before you give up? How many flops before you throw in the towel out of frustration, declaring success impossible or rationalizing the results as inadequate? 1? 100? 10 000?

Truth is, it’s not that difficult to make failure impossible. Let’s make two assumptions about your method:

First: you are constantly altering your approach. You never stop testing modifications, incorporating only the changes that show improvements in your results and discarding those that don’t.

Second: you don’t stop until you reach your goal. This includes ignoring feelings of discomfort or distractions.

If you want something, and apply those two principles, success is inevitable. It is literally impossible that you don’t reach your goal. Maybe it takes a long time or requires a lot of sacrifice* but, in the end, you will have what you want. Throw enough objects in a lake and you won’t need a bridge.

Usually, the first point is not what causes a dream to be unfulfilled. Most people are smart enough to stop bashing their head against a wall after the first few tries and look for a way around. It is actually the second reason that is far and away the more common reason people fail.

Think about the last time you gave up on something. It was for one of the following reasons:

a. You weren’t pursuing something YOU really wanted

There are all kinds of reasons you might have been doing this, such as to fulfill someone else’s expectations. You don’t want to go to law school, but both your parents did, so you submit a half-assed application to get them off your back.

b. You were afraid to succeed

A lot of people are unconsciously afraid to succeed and so keep themselves in a state of failure. You might not want to alienate yourself from your current friends by earning twice their income, so you don’t apply for a fantastic job opportunity you know you are qualified for.

From now on, stop wasting your time and energy on things you won’t succeed at. Before you declare yourself committed to a new goal, consider your personal motivation for the outcome and any reasons you might self-sabotage. If you find anomalies, either handle them first or pursue something else. Whether you spend some time accepting that travelling the world will harm the relationships you have at home or decide friends and family are too important to leave behind, either is preferable to investing your valuable resources (time, money, energy) in an attempt to become location independent that is doomed from the outset.

Chase dreams that YOU believe in, and will go the distance for. It’s foolhardy to do otherwise. If you’re prepared to invest enough to fail once, commit to failing as many times as necessary until you succeed.

*There are ways to optimize your approach and make success quicker or easier, but those are articles for another time.